The influence of collaboration styles to children’s cognitive performance in digital problem-solving game “William Adventure”: A comparative case study

Since a large variety of digital games have been used in many fields for educational purposes, their real functions in learning have caught much attention as well. This study first defines learning characteristics of problem-solving digital games and their corresponding cognitive levels, then designs and develops a problem-solving game in accordance to the criteria. Tasks in the game context are inter-related to each other so that players need to critically and creatively think about problem solutions. Learners’ task analyses are performed to observe four elementary learners’ gaming paths, behaviors and cognitive activities, individually and collaboratively. System documentation, video recording, researcher observation, and interviews are conducted to analyze learners’ learning strategies and their cognitive performance during the gaming process.     

从软件角度谈机房的日常维护和管理

随着教学信息化程度的不断提高,如何对计算机机房进行科学、高效的维护和管理,在保障正常的教学和科研任务的同时,减轻机房管理员的负担,是一个重要的课题。文章从软件角度出发,分别对系统的安装和分发、硬盘还原以及四种常见的系统安全设置进行了详细探讨。     

Work fatigue and physiological symptoms in different occupations of high-elevation construction workers

The objective of this study is to investigate whether work fatigue and physiological symptoms that high-elevation construction workers experience would be affected by the occupations. Questionnaires of demographic data and subjective fatigue symptoms as well as some physiological measurements were carried out, pre- and post-shift, on scaffolders, steel fixers, formworkers, electrician-plumbers, concreters and miscellaneous workers at a high-rise building construction site. This study found that some subjective fatigue symptoms coincide with the life style of some workers and that the extent of fatigue symptoms and physiological strains varies among different occupations of construction workers. Scaffolders, steel fixers and formworkers are categorized as physically demanding fatigue type of workers, while concreters, electrician-plumbers and miscellaneous workers as general type. The prevalence and occurrence of subjective fatigue symptoms indicate high-elevation workers have more complaints of “projection of physical impairment” than “drowsiness and dullness” and “difficulty in concentration”. Some unexpected changes (i.e., post-shift measurements are greater than pre-shift ones) in some strength tests in scaffolders and concreters were consistent with the observations of how they exercised their bodies during work shift. Considerable variation of average heart rate among occupations was found, with scaffolders the highest and concreters the lowest. This study concludes that questionnaires of subjective fatigue symptoms and some physiological measurements can be used as indicators to predict the extent of strains or hazards which construction workers encounter. In terms of management program of safety and health, more attention should be paid to those physically demanding workers, such as scaffolders, workers with lower sense of safety and health, such as miscellaneous workers, and workers with older age, such as concreters.     

A novel user identification scheme with key distribution preserving user anonymity for distributed computer networks

Recently, Yang et al. proposed an efficient user identification scheme with key distribution, in which it is possible for the user to anonymously log into a system and establish a secret key shared with the system. Mangipudi and Katti later demonstrated a Deniable-of-Service (DoS) attack on the Yang et al. scheme and then proposed an improvement to withstand such an attack. However, this paper demonstrates an identity disclosure attack to show that neither schemes’ claimed user anonymity requirement can be achieved. We further propose a novel user identification scheme with key distribution preserving user anonymity for distributed computer networks. The proposed scheme not only withstands the attacks mentioned above, but also achieves the following: (i) user anonymity, (ii) key distribution, (iii) mutual authentication, and (iv) key confirmation. The performance of our scheme is of greater efficiency than that of previously proposed schemes in terms of communication costs and computational complexities.     

Estimating the Laplace-Beltrami Operator by Restricting 3D Functions

We present a novel approach for computing and solving the Poisson equation over the surface of a mesh. As in previous approaches, we define the Laplace-Beltrami operator by considering the derivatives of functions defined on the mesh. However, in this work, we explore a choice of functions that is decoupled from the tessellation. Specifically, we use basis functions (second-order tensor-product B-splines) defined over 3D space, and then restrict them to the surface. We show that in addition to being invariant to mesh topology, this definition of the Laplace-Beltrami operator allows a natural multiresolution structure on the function space that is independent of the mesh structure, enabling the use of a simple multigrid implementation for solving the Poisson equation.     

Manufacturing evaluation system based on AHP/ANP approach for wafer fabricating industry

The critical role played by manufacturing performance measurement systems in achieving competitive success is increasingly recognized. Manufacturing success may depend on the compatibility between a performance measurement system in operation at subordinate organizational levels and an organization’s global goals. Therefore, developing an integrated performance measurement model is significant for strategy management. This study proposes an integrated process that allows manufacturing systems to construct performance measurement model. Performance criteria from the literature and an expert questionnaire were utilized prior to building the performance measurement model. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and the analytical network process (ANP) are utilized to determine the weight of each criterion when generating the performance model for manufacturing systems.     

An integrated method for finding key suppliers in SCM

Association rule is a widely used data mining technique that searches through an entire data set for rules revealing the nature and frequency of relationships or associations between data entities. Supplier selection is a significant work in supply chain management. Often, there will be thousands of potential suppliers and identifying a subset of these suppliers can be a complex process of determining a satisfactory subset based on a number of factors. In this paper, the supplier selection can be viewed as the problem of mining a large database of shipment. The proposed method incorporates the extended association rule algorithm of data mining with that of set theory to find key suppliers. This research has employed a numerical example for the integrated method to develop suitable supplier clusters. The results show that the method is effective and applicable.     

基于MIMU的输电线路运动监测技术

在分析当前输电线运动监测技术优缺点的基础上,提出一种基于MIMU的输电线路运动监测技术.采集MIMU时间序列信号建立ARMA模型,对比力和角速度信号进行Kalman滤波处理;由于平动和转动的幅值是由比力和角速度积分所得,以各轴比力平方和与角速度平方作为衡量输电线平动和转动幅度的标准,并对数据进行分段,通过计算数据段间的欧式相似度衡量数据的变异程度来评估输电线平动和转动的幅度及变化趋势,对测得加速度和角速度做FFT变换得出运动频率.为验证运动监测技术,设计转台摇摆模拟输电线3种不同幅值运动,将数据进行上述算法处理,结果表明,估计出的平动和转动幅度趋势和幅值变化相同,且精确识别施加的频率为2Hz.实验室条件下,搭建的模拟系统正常工作.     

Robust TSK fuzzy modeling for function approximation with outliers

The Takagi-Sugeno-Kang (TSK) type of fuzzy models has attracted a great attention of the fuzzy modeling community due to their good performance in various applications. Most approaches for modeling TSK fuzzy rules define their fuzzy subspaces based on the idea of training data being close enough instead of having similar functions. Besides, training data sets algorithms often contain outliers, which seriously affect least-square error minimization clustering and learning algorithms. A robust TSK fuzzy modeling approach is presented. In the approach, a clustering algorithm termed as robust fuzzy regression agglomeration (RFRA) is proposed to define fuzzy subspaces in a fuzzy regression manner with robust capability against outliers. To obtain a more precision model, a robust fine-tuning algorithm is then employed. Various examples are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach. From the simulation results, the proposed robust TSK fuzzy modeling indeed showed superior performance over other approaches